of los angeles lakers Recently, several high-profile official missteps have taken the wrong turn. Most recently, LeBron James was apparently fouled by Jayson Tatum on Saturday’s winning layup attempt against the Boston Celtics (this was confirmed in the final two-minute report the next day). , the referee swallowed the whistle and only allowed the game to go into overtime, where the Lakers lost.
A few weeks ago, James was burned in a no-call on another potentially game-winning layup attempt in a double overtime loss to the Dallas Mavericks. His two-minute report at the end confirmed: Christian Wood Indeed, hacking LeBron to tie the score and ticking the final seconds at the end of the first overtime.
This is why LeBron was furious after a missed call in Boston. He didn’t see it as a one-off. He sees it, and he sees it as a pattern in which the Lakers are disproportionately and unfairly wronged by these late-game miscalls, and certainly continues to see it.
“It’s been building,” James said of his frustration. …I don’t understand what we’re doing.I watch basketball every day.I watch these games every day and it’s not happening to anyone else.Just It’s weird.”
It begs the question: Is LeBron right? Do the Lakers actually get burned more often than other teams? Yahoo Sports’ Ben Rohrbach decided to dig into every Last Two Minute Report published this season to investigate James’ allegations, and released its findings on Tuesday.
In the end, LeBron was wrong.
Rohrbach reports that the Lakers have been involved in 34 illegal calls/non-calls in the final two minutes of the season, 21 of them in favor. That’s over 28 other teams. surely, Mavericks There are more total wrong whistles, 23.
In other words, of the 34 bad late-game calls that impacted the Lakers’ game, 61.8% benefited the Lakers.only clipperswas 63.2% and had better luck in the late game.
Kudos to Rohrbach for doing the dirty work of digging into these reports. Many, myself included, were starting to buy into LeBron’s case, but it was actually clouded by the most recent high-profile ones in our memory.
